There is no woman more interconnected with the history of the 7th Regiment Armory than Eleanor Roosevelt, whose father was a prominent member during her childhood and whose uncle was a role model to the Gilded Age men of the National Guard. She hosted events at the Armory to raise money for unemployed women during the Great Depression, attended dance festivals in the drill hall, and donated funds for the Armory’s maintenance when money was tight. Professor Wiesen Cook’s extensive biography of Eleanor Roosevelt has been praised as the essential portrait of a woman who towers over the 20th century. The third and final volume (Viking, 2016) takes us through World War II, FDR’s death, the founding of the UN, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s death in 1962. It follows the arc of war and the evolution of a marriage, as the first lady realized the cost of maintaining her principles even as the country and her husband were not prepared to adopt them. These years—the war years—made Eleanor Roosevelt the woman she became: leader, visionary, guiding light.

Blanche Wiesen Cook is a distinguished professor of history at John Jay College and Graduate Center, City University of New York. Eleanor Roosevelt Volume I was a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and both volumes (I and II) were New York Times bestsellers. Her other publications include The Declassified Eisenhower and Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution. She was a featured speaker in the Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts.

Image: Eleanor Roosevelt with Colonel Ralph Tobin and Secretary of War George H. Dern in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall on May 22, 1933, Photo: 7th Regiment Archives, NYSMM